


Penny Toss

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, there's nothing like a badly written fanfiction to brighten up your day
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-06 20:35:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8768338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Bucky tossed a penny; it maybe decided something. We find that penny tosses define a lot of things, here, and not all of them are noticed.
Or, Steve doesn't like a lot of things, one of them being Bucky's high school relationship, and maybe when they meet later he'll find out what was really going on, and they'll both stop being such knuckleheads and just get their act together. Isn't that what we were looking for the whole time?





	1. First (1)

**Author's Note:**

> Heey! Fresh off Microsoft Word, no beta, so I do apologize in advance. I also apologize in advance for how odd this one is, because I've sorta got a plan and I'm also sorta just writing it because I had some feels and I was like, hey, let's get this down so I can make other people suffer, too. And now here we are. Enjoy, or don't, I dunno, I can never tell if my writing is actually good or if it's just a piece of crap that people read because it has two lovely characters in it.

They’re lying on Steve’s bed. Bucky’s got his feet propped up on the headboard and he’s fidgeting with the penny in his hand, and Steve’s curled up with a pencil flying over the sketchpad that’s tucked under his palm.

Bucky tosses the penny in the air but he’s been doing it nonstop for the last twenty minutes so Steve just goes on sketching, making the shape of Bucky’s arm against the neat covers, when Bucky’s face twists in a frown and he flips over.

Steve huffs. “Stop moving,” he complains, but it’s unnecessary because he’s already got half of the drawing done and he could draw Bucky blindfolded anyway.

“Stevie, I need your help.” Bucky fidgets with the penny some more before chucking it at the window. It clangs off the glass but Steve doesn’t even bat an eye; he’s apparently grown too used to Bucky’s antics to be surprised anymore.

“My help?” Steve raises an eyebrow. “You’ve never needed my help before in the history of this planet, Buck.”

“’Course not,” Bucky says automatically, then seems to realize that’s not the argument he needs to be having at the moment. Steve can see the gears switching in Bucky’s head, can see the steam pouring out of his ears as he thinks. He would get nervous, but then again, he’s not got a reason to be nervous.

“I need your help with a girl I like.” The words tumble out of his mouth, just sort of fall into the air between them, and it takes Steve a bit of time to collect them before he puts his pencil down and stares.

“My help?” He repeats. There’s a faint disappointment brewing between his ribs but maybe it’s because he was expecting Bucky to say something that Steve could actually help him with. Or, well, maybe it wasn’t. “In what way could I possibly help you with that, Buck?”

He stares for a beat longer, just to make sure Bucky can’t possibly be serious, and returns to his sketching. Bucky, with his wavy hair and his pretty eyes and his shadowy cheekbones, with his lean body and bright smile and stupid pick-up lines. Bucky who’s trying to tell Steve he needs his help. Yeah, right.

Bucky flips over again and smothers his face in the covers. “I’m serious,” he whines, and Steve keeps his lips pursed so he doesn’t smile, “Please, I need it. I tried one of those stupid pick-up lines you hate and she glared at me and I can’t deal with this anymore. She’ll talk to you before she talks to me and I need you to get her to go out with me.”

A twinge in Steve’s chest every time he starts a new sentence, every time he says ‘she’, but it’s probably because if Bucky gets a girlfriend, it’ll be less time he spends with Steve and more time he spends with her.

“Who’s this mystery girl anyway, Buck? I’m sure half the school would be falling over themselves to date you.”

Bucky snorts. “Which half? The half that’s younger than us?”

Steve looks up again from the outline he’s made of Bucky’s leg, and he pokes at his friend with the tip of his pencil. “Answer the question, jerk.”

Bucky flicks the pencil away, but his lips split into that killer grin that makes Steve look away. “Punk,” he breathes. “Her name’s Natasha. Natasha Romanoff. She’s on the gymnastics team.”

Steve hums his approval. “Right, yeah, I know her. I think we took bio together freshman year. I think she’s about as likely to kill you as she is to kiss you, isn’t she?”

Bucky sighs. “Yeah.” He inhales, as if he’s about to say something else, but it barrels out of him in a huff. “Yeah.”

“What’d’you think I can do, anyway? Like she’s got a reason to talk to me.”

“So you’ll help me?” Bucky’s eyes sparkle with something that could be contentment, could be mischief. “You think I’ve got a shot?”

Steve fills in the shading in Bucky’s hair, in how it sprawls and curls up to tickle his chin, and pushes the sketchbook away before he can get sucked into another drawing of the same person again. “Have you ever looked in the mirror, Bucky?”

Bucky laughs. “Absolutely correct. So the question now is how?”

“With an ego the size of Russia, the question’s going to be ‘why didn’t we see it coming’ when Natasha rips you in two.”

Bucky swats at Steve and his head relaxes against the covers. Steve toes the sketchpad and pencil beneath his bed and stretches his legs out to lie beside Bucky. A thought creeps into his mind, a terrifying thought that makes him want to crawl beneath his bed with his sketchpad and never emerge again, but he pushes it away with a herculean effort, desperate to stay in the moment, desperate to stay blissful.

It works splendidly.

“You would never let her rip me in two, would you, Stevie?” Bucky nudges Steve’s shoulder with his own and Steve throws an arm out in response. His hand finds Bucky’s nose and he pinches it, and to his delight Bucky splutters. “That’s a yes? I think that’s a yes.”

Steve laughs. “What do you want, Buck? What do you want me to do?”

“Well first, get me that penny, would you? I’ll be a cent poorer without it and I’m broke already.”

 

\--

 

Those two have been dating for three weeks steadily now, and it’s driving Steve insane.

It started with the littlest of things; Bucky would be a minute late to class, a minute late to their meeting spot behind the school before they walked home, a minute late to the football game they’d decided they would go to. And Steve was perfectly okay with it. After all, it’s got to take _some_ effort to hold a relationship, hasn’t it?

Then it escalated. Bucky stopped coming to Steve’s house after school about halfway through the second week, somewhere in between ‘I can’t believe she’s into me, Stevie,’ and ‘this girl is absolutely magnificent, Stevie’, and maybe Steve’s lost somewhere in the middle, somewhere around ‘but what about me’.

He knows he needs to take a step back, to just calm down, let it all go, but he can’t, not really. And that’s another thing; he doesn’t know why. Bucky’s his best friend in the entire universe, he’s had Bucky all to himself since they shook hands on the playground in the second grade, he could stand to share, couldn’t he? It’s not like Bucky was decidedly moving to Antarctica or something like that.

He was right there. Just… a little more occupied. With something else. Rather, with someone else.

And oh, okay, as much as Steve really knows he should let Bucky have fun with his girlfriend, Steve really, really doesn’t like it.

He doesn’t like it so much that he brings it up on Sunday afternoon when he probably shouldn’t, because he’s pissed, dammit, so he’s going to do something about it.

Like the idiot he is.

“Buck, how much of that physics project have you actually completed?” Annoyance ticks at his voice but he can’t bring himself to rein it back in. “You started it, like, two hours ago.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches. “Maybe half.” Steve glares some more. “Okay, a little less than half. But I’ll get it done, I swear, and it’s not even due tomorrow, so I’ll be fine.”

That’s not exactly Steve’s point.

“I have a magic solution, Einstein,” Steve drawls, and he leans back in his chair, “maybe if you put the phone down, you’d finally get things done.”

Bucky looks up from said phone. He’s cradling it in interlocked fingers and he taps his forefinger against the side of it nervously. He blinks. Steve wants to slap him. He’s not allowed to look at him with those puppy eyes, not when Steve’s trying to say something important to him.

“I’m serious. Can you even remember the last time you put your phone down for more than five minutes?”

Bucky opens his mouth.

“ _Consecutively_. Five minutes in a row.”

Bucky shuts his mouth.

“That’s what I thought. Care to do your homework now?”

Bucky sighs and shuts off the phone’s screen. He flips it over in his hands a few times, then when he’s established that yes, Steve’s being serious, he slaps it down onto the table face-down. “I’m done,” he declares, grey eyes drilling into Steve’s suddenly uncertain ones with a somber veil, “with it. I’m going to finish all my work now and I won’t look at my phone again.”

It gives Steve a satisfaction that he doesn’t care to analyze. Rather, he shoves it off to the side, because he probably doesn’t want to know what it is and why it’s there.

“Good. Maybe now you’ll stop failing all your classes, huh?”

An indignant squawk escapes Bucky and he throws an eraser at Steve. “Failing! Tell that to my solid 3.7 GPA!”

Steve has to dodge the missile but he loves it, oh he loves it, and he doesn’t even know why he feels so relieved that Bucky’s assaulting him with insignificant objects again, doesn’t know why it gives him a comfortable contentment, but it just… does. Of course it does.

“Right, right, you nerd.”

“ _Punk_ ,” Bucky accentuates, and picks up his pencil. He repeats it again, under his breath, a smile on his face, “punk.”

The room’s silent again, much like it was before, but it’s a different silence now. Now it’s a silence in which Steve is paying attention to Bucky and Bucky is paying attention to Steve and it’s the two of them, studying-but-not-really, really just staring at papers until one of them gets bored and decides to start up a game of ‘who can get away with stealing food before Sarah notices’, but it’s the best kind of silence, the kind of silence that makes him happy.

“Jerk,” Steve responds. Because that’s just how he likes his silences; happy.


	2. First (Two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter!! Whoa! My planning is through the roof with this one.  
> I'm afraid this one doesn't give me the feels that the first one did but the next one shall herald more feels I can [almost] promise that..  
> (Also this one has also not been edited and I wrote it over the span of two days and I know that's not an excuse for spelling/grammar mistake but don't hate me if you find mistakes please)

There is not Steve without Bucky, and there is not Bucky without Steve. It’s always been like that, and it always will be like that. But now there’s a third one, now there’s not either of them without Natasha, it’s always Steve and Bucky and Natasha, and Steve doesn’t mind it.

Steve likes Natasha, he really does. She’s sharp and quick-witted and always says the right thing and her laugh makes him want to celebrate and she’s a lovely friend who never leaves them behind and she’s just perfect in general. They’re lovely friends, they are.

Maybe that’s the problem, though.

Steve loves Natasha because they’re magnificent friends, and Steve loves Bucky because they’ve always _been_ magnificent friends, and he loves them both so much but maybe he loves Bucky a little more, a little bit in a different way, maybe it’s that little bit that keeps winding around him when he thinks about the future.

In about six months, they’ll be out of high school and into college, they’ll either be split or bound together, and Steve doesn’t know if there’s really anything he can do to sway the balance.

Steve’s garnered the interest of some folks at the art school he’s been looking forward to, Bucky’s pulled a science Olympiad win out of his ass because he’s an absolute nerd, and Natasha’s had gymnastics scholarships lined up for months already, and perhaps it’s because of all of this that they’re all trying to pretend that the future isn’t looming over their heads.

“Nat, can you stick another thing of popcorn in the microwave?” Bucky props his feet up on Steve’s legs and throws his head back. Natasha, in the kitchen waiting for her coffee to finish brewing, frowns and then there’s an unpopped bag of popcorn flying through the air. It hits Bucky in the ribs, and he screeches in surprise.

Steve laughs.

“Stop laughing, Steve, I swear this girl’s going to be the reason I die young.” He throws it back to her, and she catches the wayward toss with a grace that leaves Steve in awe, even after the year and a half he’s known her.

“Possibly if you tried to stay alive, you’d be smarter. And you wouldn’t provoke her,” Steve advises, cradling his cup of hot chocolate closer to his chest. He’s tempted to push Bucky’s legs off of him, if just to annoy him, but he sort of maybe enjoys the relaxed familiarity.

Or maybe he’s just not had enough sleep.

(He pushes Bucky’s feet off of him anyway, and they fall to the carpet with a thud which leaves Bucky muttering about how lucky his friends are that he doesn’t just up and walk away right there.)

The coffee machine beeps and Natasha plucks her mug out of it. “Start the movie, James,” she says, flipping off the light switches. She’s the only one, save for Bucky’s mother, who calls him James. It took a little getting used to, in the start, but Steve hardly registers it anymore. Except perhaps in times like this, times when Steve’s tuned in to everything that’s happening around him, when he’s doing stupid things like pondering life and existence and thinking about Bucky.

He’s thought about Bucky more than enough over the course of the last year and a half. Probably thought about him more than he should have. But he supposes that’s what happens when your best friend of so many years is so very close to leaving forever; he supposes that’s what happens when such a relationship is so very close to being lost.

Natasha squeezes her way in between Bucky and Steve, who are on either ends of the couch, and crosses her ankles on Steve’s lap in much the same way that Bucky did just moments ago. She leans back against Bucky’s shoulder and brings the coffee mug to her lips and there’s the simple, happy look on her features that’s mirrored in Bucky’s, and Steve’s quite afraid that he might not ever have that look on his face.

The movie begins but Steve’s not really paying attention. Rather, he fidgets with the penny he found in the pocket of his jeans a little while ago. It’s shiny with the number of times he’s run the pads of his fingers over it, and only God knows how long he’s had this penny, he doesn’t even remember when it started being something he always kept with him.

Faintly he can hear a murmur passed between Natasha and Bucky, and he shifts his gaze sidelong in curiosity.

His eyes meet with Bucky’s, who smiles, lips turning up at the corners and eyes crinkling a little at the corners but it’s the smile he gives everybody instinctively, the smile Steve has seen since fifth grade and the smile Steve knows is fake.

Steve tilts his head to the side. _Not watching the movie?_

Bucky’s mouth quirks. _Nah._

A blink. Raised eyebrow. _What’s wrong?_

Bucky looks away. His attention slides to Natasha, her eyes still glued to the television (but they both know better than to assume she doesn’t know exactly what’s going on), and then slides to the movie still playing. _Don’t want to talk._

Natasha shifts her feet on Steve’s lap and her toes nudge his arm. He gives her an inquiring look, and she jerks her head back to indicate Bucky, who’s now solemnly watching the character on screen chase after a train. _What’s his deal?_

Steve shrugs. _No idea._

She sighs. She rests her copper curls back on Bucky’s shoulder and Steve tosses the penny he’s got in his hand, and it lands right back on the arm of the couch, quite conveniently.

Tails.

Oh, well.

He pockets the penny and drags his gaze back to the movie, in which the character is now arguing with a woman with large, imposing sunglasses.

Perhaps he should enjoy all the time he’s got left with these friends. But somehow it seems like that time’s already run out.

\--

College hype is like the first day of elementary school all over again.

Steve knows nobody but his roommate Sam, hardly knows where his classes are for the day, and really has no idea what the frick he’s doing, but that’s okay. Perfectly peachy.

He’s sitting on the floor by his little twin bed, legs splayed wide, laptop heating a nice patch on his thigh. Facebook hasn’t gotten much more interesting since the last time he checked it two hours ago, but there’s a name he’s been itching to click on for months now, a name he promised himself he wouldn’t bother with until at least twelve hours before college begins to take up the entirety of his day, a name he’s been seeking but avoiding, now hovering around.

He sucks in a breath. Always one for the dramatics, Steve is.

Nothing’s changed in Bucky’s profile. It’s strange, the familiarity, because Steve had been expecting a makeover for so long that now he’s finally brought himself to poke around he can’t believe it looks exactly the same.

It’s been three months since he last saw Bucky, since his sister whisked him off to Michigan to study engineering of some sort, since their last actual conversation. A phone conversation every two days for the first two weeks really doesn’t count as contact; it was like there was a thread that tied them so close together, and when it was stretched, it just snapped.

No new photos. No updates.

Frustrated (and on a roll), Steve decides he’s not going to give up on making himself feel bad about not having this friend, he’s going to keep trying until he finds something that will invariably make him sad. Because that’s a completely reasonable thing to do.

So he checks Instagram. And _bingo_ … something’s missing.

It takes a moment for the gear in Steve’s head to stop turning, for the change to click, but it does, and Steve’s sat on his floor, shell-shocked for a good moment and a half.

He scrolls through Bucky’s feed, pretending he’s not really stalking, it’s not called stalking when it’s your best friend (or former best friend) (cue the tears), and finally accepts it, _no_ , he’s found something but it’s not what he expected _at all_.

There are no photos of Bucky and Natasha.

There used to be one, he remembers it quite vividly because he’s seen it so many times, with something akin to caution but closer to homesickness swimming beneath his skin. It’s not just Bucky and Natasha, because Steve’s in the picture too, but in the photo Bucky’s sprawled across his couch and Natasha’s leaning against the armrest opposite to the one on which he’s resting his head, and they’re watching each other with smiles like the sunrise plastered across their faces. Steve’s laughing in the photo (he hates it) and he’s criss-cross on the carpet with his head thrown back against Bucky’s arm and his hand propping him up, fingers curled around a pencil (because when are they not), and Steve just _really_ misses that photo.

He adores that picture. And he despises it at the same time, because in it is written something so clear that he’s dumstruck he didn’t see it for the first two years that it had been there, that nobody ever saw it.

But it’s not in Bucky’s feed anymore. And also gone are the other four or five pictures that used to feature Natasha and Bucky as the lovely couple they are, and because Steve is an extremely experienced and knowledgeable interweb stalker, he deduces that they are, therefore, broken up.

He just doesn’t understand why.

The immediate, jarring _crack_ of the door being pushed open is like a hook around the ribs, yanking him back to the reality where he’s frowning at the screen like it’s done him some personal injustice.

“Hey Steve,” Sam smiles, as he’s done the past five days they’ve known each other, and Steve smiles back because he can and why not, “I’m dropping off my jacket,” he holds up the thing, and then throws it across the room so it lands on his bed, “and heading out to the Burger King. You want anything?”

Steve flicks a glance over to the clock. And then he yelps. “Is that the time?”

“Afraid so. Don’t worry, I’ll grab you something.” Sam winks, his grin stretching impossibly wider, and ducks back out the door before Steve can protest.

Honestly, Steve’s been a bitch in his nineteen years of life on Earth, and he’s done absolutely nothing to deserve the blessing that is Sam Wilson.

But, he thinks, as he returns to Bucky’s Instagram profile that he probably doesn’t need to be stalking, he’s done nothing to deserve the wrenching feeling that ripples through him every time he sees Bucky’s face, be it in his mind or on a screen. Sure, he’s been a bitch, but this… this hurts.

He shuts the lid of the laptop, perhaps with a little more force than necessary, and pushes it aside.

Maybe he should call Bucky.

_No_.

Maybe he should, just to check in, say hello, maybe Bucky will pick up, it’s been a few months, he won’t seem clingy. Or desparate. It’s okay.

_Oh, hell no_.

Why not? There’s no reason why not. He slides his phone out from the pocket of his jeans and flips it over in his hands. Suddenly, he’s not so sure he even has Bucky’s number still saved. There’s a good possibility that he’d deleted it a few weeks after they stopped talking, just so he wouldn’t have to see the name every time he scrolled through his contacts.

Then again, there’s a good possibility he kept it (out of something very close to hope).

Just to be sure, he checks. His inner consciousness goes completely bonkers, but he checks anyway, thumb hovering right over the button that would place the call, debating it and waging civil war on himself.

Do it.

_No._

Please.

_Bad idea._

Why not?

_Nothing good._

Nothing bad, either.

_You never know._

And so it ends. You never know, not til you try, but Steve wasn’t really feeling up to breaking his heart six ways to Sunday with a missed call or an awkward conversation.

But then again, I suppose he broke his heart anyway, with all that regret and possibility suffocating it.


	3. Second (One)

The wheels of his suitcase seem to be having some trouble with the cracks in the sidewalk, but he pulls it along haphazardly nonetheless. His gaze trails over the whole house; it’s a big house. For a bachelor pad, for a man who lives alone and is about twenty-five years old, it’s a big house.

If Bucky’d had his life as together as Sam so apparently does, maybe he wouldn’t be such a … a bachelor?

Nervously he taps his fingers against his thigh as he waits on the steps for Sam to open the door. He catches himself at it. He shouldn’t be nervous, he’s got no reason to be nervous, has he? It’s a new city, but he’s staying with Sam, who he’s known through Natasha since grad school, who he’s even stayed with before, so it’s not like he’s going to have any problems.

But there’s something funny about. Something that tells him he’s definitely got a reason to be nervous.

Sam beams brighter than the sun as he opens the door and greets Bucky with a one-shoulder hug. “Hey, man,” Bucky says into Sam’s shoulder, “so good to see you.”

Sam smiles. “Great to see you too, buddy.” He ushers Bucky in. “Man, I feel awful about this, but I actually gotta run.”

Alarmed, Bucky drops his luggage and stares at Sam. “Now?”

Sheepishly Sam rubs at the back of his neck, slowly inching towards where his keys are lying in a pretty little bowl. “Yeah, sorry Bucky, but since it’s Friday I didn’t take the day off and I gotta clock in before noon.” He turns back around on his way out of the door, leaving Bucky effectively stranded in his home. “Make yourself at home, man, there’s food in the fridge and the guest room’s the first one on the right upstairs, don’t be afraid to poke around, alright?”

Pointedly he glances at Bucky’s luggage, still crowding his feet where he dropped it, before pulling the door shut and locking it behind him.

A beat passes. Then two.

Bucky sighs. Might as well get to work.

 

\--

 

Screw work. He chooses instead to look up on his phone the closest place he might actually have some fun, and that is how he now finds himself staring up at a neon sign that somehow manages to be outrageous and classy at the same time.

He goes in.

He can’t express in words how thankful he is that the stench of sweaty bodies isn’t the first thing that hits his nose, but it’s definitely got its place in the top five, perhaps third to alcohol and… incense?

The bar is his first stop. He has already established via text with Sam that he has until about eleven o’clock tonight before Sam gets home, and because it’s just rude to not be home when his host is, he’s set a reminder for ten thirty so he can begin his lovely walk back.

Ten thirty is an hour and a half away. He’s got plenty of time.

It’s not until he’s done his first bottle that he realizes he knows absolutely nobody here, which is all the more reason for him to dance his beautiful heart out. He downs the last of his bottle, which definitely isn’t enough to keep him going for the next forty-five minutes, but he’ll come back if he needs a refill.

The bass thrums through the floor in a way he hasn’t had the opportunity to feel for a few months at least, and he lets himself go in the rhythm almost immediately. Fast-paced riffs trace the contour of every shape he sees around him, but there’s nothing more exhilarating than being amidst a crowd, and Bucky’s absolutely ready to let go of everything about this city that’s given him a nervous feeling, absolutely ready to let go of just everything.

Well, almost. Ready as can be, all the way up until he decides he wants to top off his alcohol level and slips out of the crowd and back to the bar, until he sees the painfully familiar halo of blond hair out of the corner of his eye.

 _Shut up_ , he tells his subconscious, the subconscious that’s attempting to leap out of his body to join the person who looks quite a bit like someone he quite doesn’t want to see, _shut up shut up shut up_.

 _Go, go, go,_ his subconscious fires back. If it had a face, Bucky would slap it.

 _This is exactly why Natasha dumped you, you idiot_ , Bucky mentally pinches whatever force in him is trying to slide down the few barstools it would take to close the distance between him and the blond guy. It’s probably not even Steve, anyway. It’s probably his stupid brain overreacting. There are a lot of blond-haired guys in this world. A lot in this country, a lot in this city, a lot in this bar itself, probably. Doesn’t mean it’s Steve.

Bucky makes the mistake of letting his attention wander as he takes his first gulp of the new bottle in his hand. And his attention has had only one goal: to surround the Steve lookalike.

Unsurprisingly, his attention has definitely found Steve frickin’ Rogers. And it’s decided to stay there.

He damn near drops the bottle in his hand when Steve decides to look in his direction, when his eyes meet Steve’s blue ones, looking darker than ever in the dim lighting, looking captivating as ever despite the years apart.

Bucky puts in the hard effort to swallow the drink in his mouth. It goes down with a bitter taste that is soon replaced by the simultaneous heat and frost that’s crawling across his skin, because yes it’s really Steve, and Steve’s still holding his gaze, his features all frozen in shock.

Probably in the same way that Bucky’s staring at Steve.

“Buck,” Steve says, breaking the most awkward silence Bucky’s ever experienced in his life, and Bucky doesn’t hear him over the music but he can see the shape that Steve’s mouth makes, in the same way that he used to read Steve’s lips every time teachers would place them across the room from each other.

In high school. Five years ago.

An awfully long time.

Herein lies Bucky’s first mistake, as he stops paying attention to what his body is doing, and it chooses to slide across that chasm of a gap that separates them, close enough to see the little bump in Steve’s nose, close enough to count everything that’s changed but not changed about his face, because he looks so different but he looks the same, he looks so new but so like his old Steve that Bucky still has no words in his throat.

Steve clears his throat, and looks away. The corners of his lips pull up, but it’s painful for Bucky to see because it’s the smile that he knows is fake. Steve’s never been a magnificent actor. “Buck,” he says again, “it’s been a while.”

Unexpectedly, Bucky feels a laugh bubble out of him, and the trance is broken. He looks back to his own drink with look suddenly inadequate faced with the treasure chest of uncertainty sitting right next to him. “Yeah, Steve, it has. A long while.”

“Why are you here?” The question tumbles out of Steve, vowels wrapping around each other, hurried, uncomfortable. It makes something wrap around Bucky’s ribs and squeeze.

“I’m, um, visiting. A friend. Met him in college, and there was a project that work… sent me down for. What about you?”

Bucky can’t bring himself to look at Steve again, to glue his eyes back onto Steve’s different-but-same features, mostly because Bucky knows that if he looks again, he will not be able to look away.

A thought hits him, kind of like a rainstorm. This is his best friend. His _best friend_ of eight years, the one that he hasn’t spoken to in the past four years, but perhaps all those missed years of communication has built up to fall on him now like a broken wall, washing over him, overwhelming him.

“I live here, actually,” Steve says, and is it just Bucky or has his voice gotten quieter? “I never… thought I’d ever see you here.”

Bucky smiles, and glances from his drink to Steve’s, because that’s the closest he can bring himself to come to looking at Steve’s face, and he responds, “Here I am, huh?”

A pause.

“It’s been so long since we talked.” Bucky nudges Steve with an elbow, “Do you still have the same number? Maybe we could meet up sometime. Over the weekend.”

“Yeah,” he fiddles with his drink before finishing it off in a swig, and slaps it back onto the counter, “that’d be nice, Buck.” He stands up, and it startles him, so Bucky blinks up at Steve, but it’s not even that high up because Steve might have gained some things in the past few years but height has not been one of them, and Steve avoids his eyes with a fervor that makes Bucky frown.

“Leaving already?” Bucky tries to keep the hurt from his voice, he does. He knows he’s got no claim over Steve now, not after the radio silence that’s followed the two of them, but he can’t help the blossom of familiarity in his chest, the little part of him that wants to drop back into their friendship again, right where they’d left off.

“Yeah, I,” Steve fumbles for words, and Bucky fumbles for something to say that might keep him right there a little longer, long enough to find out why he’s so keen on not being near Bucky, “I’ve got to head back. It’s getting late, I’m to be up early tomorrow.”

A lame-ass excuse that Bucky can’t argue with, not because he doesn’t see through it, but rather because he doesn’t have anything to say about it. Not like he can tell Steve to stay, tell Steve to talk, can he?

“Okay,” he says, after a beat. “I’ll see you ‘round, Stevie,” he smiles, something forced that he knows looks pitiful but can’t bring himself to change, and even the nickname falters off his tongue. It sounds wrong, after so long gone unused, it sounds distant. Like it doesn’t belong there. Like he shouldn’t be using it.

Steve doesn’t reply to that, he hesitantly turns away and all but bolts to the door, pushes his way outside. Bucky’s face scrunches up in the way that it always does when he doesn’t understand, because he just _doesn’t get it_ , why would Steve be so distant, and he has to pinch himself thoroughly on the soft skin of his forearm before it really sinks in.

Before he accepts it. The fact that Steve Rogers does not want to talk to Bucky Barnes is a totally new development for him. A lack of effort for long-distance communication can be excused (though feebly), but a blatant attempt to leave the vicinity upon Bucky’s unannounced arrival is alarms blaring, weapons at the ready.

Bucky drops his head onto the counter. Wisely, the bartender leaves him alone, perhaps after seeing how tightly he’s gripped the neck of his bottle.

His phone begins to buzz in his pocket. It’s his ten-thirty alarm. But all of a sudden, the carefree beauty of a trip to visit his friend doesn’t seem as lighthearted anymore, doesn’t seem as filled with opportunity so much as with failed possibilities.

Oh, the failures. And the possibilities. But mostly, the failures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for allowing those words to be imprinted on your eyes I truly am sorry


End file.
